Voice of Vivekananda
Man comes from God in the beginning, in the middle he becomes man, and in the end he goes back to God.
I do not believe in a God who cannot give me bread here, giving me eternal bliss in heaven!
Where do you find the Indian Society standing still? It is always on the move. Sometimes, as in the times of foreign invasions, the movement has been slow, at other times quicker. This is what I say to my countrymen. I do not condemn them. I look into their past. I find that under the circumstances no nation could do more glorious work. I tell them that they have done well. I only ask them to do better.
Renunciation is the real beginning of religion. Nowadays it is very hard even to talk of renunciation. It was said of me in America that I was a man who came out of a land that had been dead and buried for five thousand years, and talked of reunciation. So says perhaps the English philosopher. Yet it is true that that is the only path to religion. Renounce and give up.
Worship of God, worship of the holy ones, concentration and meditation, and unselfish work, these are the ways of breaking away from the Maya’s net; but we must first have the strong desire to get free.
They had hundreds of Rishis in ancient India. We will have millions-we are going to have, and the sooner everyone of you believes in this, the better for India and the better for the world. Whatever you believe, that you will be.
Better be ready to live in rags with Christ than to live in palaces without him.
May He who is the Shiva of the Shaivites, the Vishnu of the Vaishnavites, the Karma of the Karmis, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jina of the Jains, the Jehova of the Christians and the Jews, the Allah of the Mohammedans, the Lord of every srct, the Brahman of the Vedantists, He, the all pervading, whose glory has been known only in this land-may He bless us, may He help us, may He give strength unto us, energy unto us!
Prophets preach, but the Incarnations like Jesus, Buddha, Sri Ramakrishna can give religion: one glance, one touch is enough.
In India religion was never shackled. No man was ever challenged in the selection of his Ishta Devata, or his sect or his preceptor, and religion grew, as it grew nowhere else. For liberty is the only condition of growth.
Om represents the whole phenomena of sound-producing. As such it must be natural symbol, the matrix of all the various sounds. Om has become the one symbol for the religious aspiration of the vast majority of human beings.
Vedanta formulates no universal brotherhood, but universal oneness.
Know for certain, that the work done by me is not the work of Vivekananda, it is His work, the Lord’s own work!
- Swami Vivekananda
